


We Are Lost In The Woods (Somewhere In New Jersey)

by AuroraKant



Series: Whumptober2020 [19]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: (to sew the wounds shut), BAMF Jason Todd, Banter, Blood, Brotherly Bonding, But They Are Also Absolute Idiots, Car Accidents, Dick Grayson Whump, Gen, Hurt Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, Lost - Freeform, Moderate descriptions of injury, Needles, Protective Jason Todd, They love each other, Whump, concussion, going down memory lane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27120511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraKant/pseuds/AuroraKant
Summary: But… that wasn’t the driver’s airbag… Jason turned his head and fire danced down his neck. It hurt to move. It hurt unbelievably, but what might hurt even worse was the sight next to him: Dick.The other man was hanging from his seat in a similar position to Jason’s, blood running from his nose into his hair. But Dick’s eyes were still closed, and glass had pierced half his face and upper body. Jason wasn’t even really sure if Dick was still breathing.Fuck.Or: Dick and Jason are on their way to a weekend retreat to reconnect, when their car crashes, leaving them to fend for their lives somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Series: Whumptober2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948651
Comments: 42
Kudos: 388
Collections: Dick Grayson Whump, Whumptober 2020





	We Are Lost In The Woods (Somewhere In New Jersey)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IthilGalad75](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IthilGalad75/gifts).



> Hello!!!  
> I am back and I really hope you guys are going to enjoy this! Especially you Ithil! You are a free Elf now, after all!!! <3  
> (and yes, the title is another The Lightning Thief Musical reference, but it just fit too well)
> 
> Comments, kudos and bookmarks really, really help me out! Thank you so much!!! <3<3<3

It happened so fast.

They were on the road towards the mountain retreat, the weather was abysmal, the serpentine streets slick with rain. Dick was driving as slow as he could, but even with the wipers on max, the road in front of him was cloaked in darkness and sheets of water.

He was turning towards Jason, the man sitting beside him with a grumpy expression on his face, when it happened.

Dick was just starting to say, “Maybe we should stop the car and wait the storm out?” when two bright lights appeared on the other side of the road, probably just rounding another serpentine Dick couldn’t see yet.

What he could see, however, was the approaching driver losing control of their car, the vehicle racing towards them, with Dick having no way to evade the oncoming car. The road was too small for that, barely able to fit one car, stones bordering one side of the road, and a sharp drop the other.

Dick could see what would happen, a split second before it did, Jason next to him forcefully returning his full attention to the situation they were in. Dick’s foot slammed down on the brakes, their car coming to a screeching halt – but it was already too late.

“Fuck! A Car!” Jason shouted and Dick reached towards him, his hand pressing against Jason’s upper body to make sure he was safely secured with a seatbelt. To make sure his little brother was okay.

But before Dick could turn around and check the road again…

The other car hit them with a loud bang, Dick unable to do anything but watch as his body was slammed against his own seatbelt, the airbags activating a split second later. It was as if it was happening to someone else, the world turning in slow motion, blood gushing from his broken nose, the car spinning and spinning and…

There was a slope. Dick knew there was a slope. And yet he was surprised when the car lurched, Jason next to him too silent. Suddenly they were falling, and the ground turned into the sky, darkness bathing everything.

Dick wasn’t sure how long they fell for, or how far their car rolled down the mountain side. He couldn’t know – he had lost consciousness the first time the roof of their car connected with stone, the first time his head was forcefully slammed against the window of their vehicle.

* * *

Consciousness was a bitch.

This was not a concept Jason decided on recently, the sentiment one he had carried with him since the first time he had woken up from a concussion in the Cave. Right now, he felt that it was rather fitting as well.

So, consciousness was a bitch.

Blinking his eyes open felt like losing a battle against a giant, and his shoulders ached as if he was Atlas, carrying the sky all on his own. The ache in his head was already starting to bother him, and he knew it would only get worse should he actually manage to pry his eyes open.

But none of that was the worst – no, the worst was the confusion.

Jason tried to focus, and as he did, he could hear the sound of rain hitting metal, and wind getting caught in leaves. Sadly, that didn’t clear anything up, because his memory was an asshole and he had no idea what the leaves and the rain were trying to tell him.

Okay, so maybe, he would have to actually open his eyes, and see for himself what was going on.

Darkness greeted him on the other side, and for once his head was grateful – no piercing light to make the headache even worse and force him to throw up. A couple of disoriented blinks later, his surroundings seemed to settle down and Jason slowly began to piece things together.

He was… he was in a car. And that car was laying on its roof, the seatbelt the only thing keeping Jason in place. Glass had exploded everywhere, the windshield no longer really existing. The airbag in front of him had lost all of its air again, which meant that Jason had been hanging here for some time. Which wasn’t good. No, not good at all.

But… that wasn’t the driver’s airbag… Jason turned his head and fire danced down his neck. It hurt to move. It hurt unbelievably, but what might hurt even more was the sight next to him: Dick.

The other man was hanging from his seat in a similar position to Jason’s, blood running from his nose into his hair. But Dick’s eyes were still closed, and glass had pierced half his face and upper body. Jason wasn’t even really sure if Dick was still breathing.

 _Fuck_.

Maybe his concussion was to blame, or maybe Jason was sometimes just really that impulsive, but without thinking about it further, without checking for his own injuries first, Jason grabbed for the release button on his seatbelt and braced his arm against the roof of the car.

It hurt like a bitch.

His ears were ringing when Jason opened his eyes again, pain bathing the world red for just a moment. His neck was on fire, his arm complaining every time he moved it, his right side completely numb. But Jason had managed to free himself. He had… he had landed on his neck-back, with his legs folded on top of him… But, hey, at least he was still alive.

It took extreme efforts to manage to get into a better position and Jason could see now why his right arm was numb: the joint had been pulled from its socket completely. Soon, that arm would hurt even worse than the one Jason suspected to be broken or at least sprained. Right now? Jason would use what he could get.

He crawled towards Dick, cautious to not make his own injuries worse, or to cut himself on the glass that seemed to be everywhere.

His hand was shaking when he reached Dick, and Jason hadn’t known that he could feel relief this strong, as when he hovered his hand over Dick’s mouth, and he could feel short bursts of air escape. Dick was still breathing. Dick was still alive.

Okay… what was the next step?

 _Free himself_. Check.

 _Check other passengers_. Check.

 _Assess your surroundings_.

Jason could do that. It didn’t matter that his head thrummed with threats of a powerful migraine, or that he was bleeding somewhere on his legs, he was the one awake, he was the one in charge right now, and that meant that he was the one who had to do the assessment checks.

He was the one who had to take care of Dick for now.

Through the broken windshield Jason could see the tree that had probably stopped their descend down whatever road they had been driving on, and the terrain seemed to be… wild. Without moving too much, Jason could see even more trees, and stones, and moss… but only the barest hints of grass.

That told him… that meant… Jason had been city boy born and raised, and even though Bruce had forced him through wilderness training, and Talia had done her best to expand on that… he would never feel comfortable enough with the wild to just… see a piece of land and declare it one thing or another.

But Jason also wasn’t dumb, in many ways he was quite the opposite actually, and looking at the slope their car had rolled down, and the tracks of destruction they had left behind, Jason felt safe to say that they were in a mountain terrain.

But why?

Jason had no fucking idea.

His head was aching, every beat of his heart sending spikes of pain through his skull, but Jason couldn’t stop yet. He had to take care of Dick. The upside-down position probably wasn’t good for whatever headwound Dick had, and the rain was starting to leak into their car.

The one thing they really didn’t need right now was a cold on top of whatever injuries were still hidden away on their bodies, underneath glass and hoodies.

He braced himself against the headboard, taking some of the strain of his knees, before he began checking Dick for injuries once more, only this time more in depth. The glass had done a good job obscuring Dick’s beauty, and if the man was unlucky it would scar, but Jason was more focused on the fact that not one of the glass shards piercing his older brother’s body had managed to nick an artery. That was… that was probably the only reason Dick was still breathing at all.

Once they had managed to get out of this car, Jason would have to sew him up, to lower the risk of infection and to make sure Dick didn’t just bleed out on him.

But Jason couldn’t do that inside this crushed tin can.

His good hand – yes, the broken one – found Dick’s pulse point, and he was happy to see that Dick hadn’t gone into shock. Yet.

The front of the car had apparently been the part that had been hit in the initial crash, if the state of the headboard was anything to go by, and Jason couldn’t see clearly enough to know if Dick’s legs had been crushed as well.

So… now or never.

Jason pulled Dick’s upper body down towards him, cautious as not to make anything worse, and when he felt as if Dick’s neck and head were adequately protected, he fumbled with the release of the seatbelt. For a moment nothing happened, Dick hanging in the air, half laying on Jason, and then the body of his brother dropped.

A soft moan escaped Dick when his legs freed themselves from the crushed space underneath the headboard, but there was too little room to see anything with Dick on top of him. Jason was just glad that Dick was still alive.

It took some maneuvering from there on, Jason pulling himself and Dick out of the car with a speed that was more comparable to a snail than a vigilante, but he had to be sure. He had to make sure, that they would survive this as well.

But was Jason supposed to explain that to Bruce should Dick died now? _Sorry, we survived the car-crash of hell, but I was impatient so now your son is dead_? Yeah, fat chance in hell.

The world outside the car was starting to brighten, the first tendrils of morning light breaking through the oppressive grey rain clouds still lingering behind. The rain had started to ebb away, and Jason was unbelievably grateful for that. Less water, less chance for a cold.

And the moss would still be wet enough, so Jason could use it to clean their wounds. Perfect, really.

Not that anything in this situation was ideal at all. Dick was possibly dying, definitely severely injured, Jason had a concussion, a few bleeding wounds, and two fucked up arms as soon as the adrenaline decided to piss off and the pain returned.

And he didn’t even know where they were!

Some fucking forest on some fucking mountain – this was the closest approximation of their location Jason could offer. And they were in their civilian get-up which meant no trackers.

Fuck… Jason had forgotten to search for a phone… He had…

Jason glanced back towards the car, and the thirty feet he had managed to cross with Dick slung over his shoulder.

No.

He could… he would go back and search for the phone once he knew that Dick was alright. He would take care of Dick first and after that… Jason wasn’t strong enough to return to the car. If he put Dick down now, he would never pick him up again. His muscles were too tired for that – and it wasn’t as if Jason had escaped the crash unscratched.

He took another step away from the car, deeper into the woods, the hope of finding shelter the only thing that kept him going.

Some time later… Jason really wasn’t sure how time worked anymore, the headache getting more pronounced with each tendril of light that broke through the clouds, Jason had secured them… something. It sure was something.

A small hideout behind a boulder, cold but at least it was dry.

As soon as they had taken a seat, Jason had begun to collect moss. Dick didn’t have any time to lose, and Jason feared neither had he, his right arm going from being numb, to sending piercing spikes of pain through his entire body with every breath.

Dick was so pale underneath the blood decorating his face, and Jason really, really hoped that he had slipped into an unruly sleep at some point. Otherwise Dick was fucked, prolonged unconsciousness a sure sign for severe and permanent brain injury.

Jason did his best.

It wasn’t good enough.

His hands were shaking as he washed the blood away, and not even the fact that he had found an emergency sewing kit in the back pocket of his pants really helped with that. Dick’s jaw was definitely broken, the entire lower half of his face already turning black and blue. Jason did his best to get all of the larger glass pieces free, sewing the biggest wounds closed.

There wasn’t much he could do beyond that, and it was such an inane thought. All Jason could think about as his needle pierced unresponsive flesh, and he stitched a hole in Dick’s cheek shut, was the fact that it would horribly scar, if Dick didn’t get those stitches redone by a professional soon.

It was easier once he moved on, plucking shards of glass out of an upper body that already mostly consisted of scar tissue, the act of keeping someone from bleeding out so much less personal, with his brother’s sleeping face no longer looking at him.

Jason couldn’t help Dick’s legs, at least one of them broken, and he could do nothing to check for brain or internal damage… all he could do was wait and hope that they would survive. That someone would find them.

Hell, he couldn’t even check if Dick’s pupils tracked, at least not really, not without a phone flashlight.

It was getting harder to focus as well, his head a mess of broken parts, the thumping so loud Jason feared he would go deaf. His left wrist had given out during the last suture Jason had sown shut, and his right arm… maybe it would hurt less if he stopped thinking about it.

_Fuck._

Maybe if he closed his eyes for a moment everything would get better, it sure as hell couldn’t get any worse.

The stone was cold underneath his ass, and Dick was his only source of warmth, the nature surrounding them feasting on their body heat and misery. Surely, he could close his eyes… surely, everything would work out just fine.

“’son?”

Dick… Dick was speaking. The voice reached him through waves of pain, through darkness so deep it felt as if Jason was drowning in it.

It was horrible work to blink his eyes open again, everything surrounding him hazy and soft. It was… it was brighter now, sunlight dancing over trees and fallen, decaying pieces of wood and… Dick was looking at him.

At some point during his descend into obliviousness, Jason must have slipped closer towards his brother, their bodies now laying next to each other. 

“’son? Wha’ happn’?”

Dick was slurring his words horribly, and Jason… he was just happy to see that his brother wasn’t a brain-dead zombie. This family already had enough cases of that, with Jason’s return from the dead being rather dramatic in that regard.

He wanted to sit up, to check over Dick’s injuries and make sure that everything would be alright, but just shifting in his position on stick and stone told him that that would be a horrible idea. Both his arms protested even the slightest motion – his right one having moved past pain and into agony.

Against his will a moan of pain escaped him, and instantly Dick looked more alert, the expression pulling the stitches and scabbed over scratches in his face taunt.

“Jason? What… what is going on?”

Finally, Jason got his bearings back, his back still resting on the forest floor:

“Car crash… I… I am not sure what… my brain is a mess, no idea what the fuck happened… but car crash.”

“Are you okay?”

“I am not the one we have to worry about, idiot.”

Dick didn’t seem to agree with Jason’s assessment, something doubtful in his gaze, but Jason couldn’t care less. His entire body felt as if it was trying to reenact his death, only this time without a crowbar but with added efforts from the other elements.

But that wasn’t the real problem, not even the escalating pressure in his skull that much of a hindrance, no, Jason had to make sure that Dick was okay.

His brother had been unconscious for an unrecorded amount of time, and he still seemed to be confused. Jason… he couldn’t do much, he wouldn’t know if Dick’s spleen had ripped, or he had a destroyed liver that was slowly killing him, but he could ensure Dick’s safety for as long as possible.

There was no way he could let the golden child die.

Bruce already didn’t like him, and offing the favorite was not going to make their relationship any better. Also… Jason actually kind of liked Dick, now that the Lazarus Pit was no longer handling the relationship department for him. It would be a shame to let his older brother die, just as they were about to get to know each other again.

It was… an uphill battle to get into a sitting position, Jason maybe blacking out for a second or two, when his weight shifted onto his right arm, but it was okay. The worry shining in Dick’s face could be ignored. It was a bit weird to see Dick so unguarded, the blood loss and headwound making it impossible for Nightwing to keep up his performer’s mask.

It was also impossible to ignore the red stains covering most of Dick’s and Jason’s clothes, or the fact that most of them seemed to have grown while Jason had… allowed himself to be knocked out.

“How do you feel?”

Easy, one thing after the other. First, Jason had to make sure that Dick was coherent – or at least as coherent as Jason was, his own memory still giving him trouble, and then he could begin to focus on the fact that both of them could very well be dying and there was nothing he could do about that.

For a moment Jason was afraid that Dick wasn’t going to answer, and then his brother grimaced, blood coating his teeth – Jason really wished he hadn’t seen that, worry racing down his spine:

“I am… Like… everything hurts… legs and chest especially… also… what the fuck happened to my face?”

“Lost a fight to the headboard of the car, I would bet”

“Shit…”

Jason could only agree with that sentiment, their situation slowly dawning on him. It had been so easy to just walk away from the car with the simple goal in mind of finding a safe place to take care of Dick, but now that sleep had washed some of that confusion away, he realized what a grave mistake that had been.

They were lost. In the woods. Without a phone or a tracker, and now they weren’t even close to the scene of the accident.

Jason tried to push those thought away, focusing instead on the dazed look still haunting Dick’s eyes, or the fact that he had forgotten to sew his own leg wound closed. The fire in his calf was easy to ignore compared to all the other parts of his body that hurt, but in his desperate attempt to find something besides their truly idiotic predicament to think about he had… well, his eyes had found the bleeding hole in his leg.

“Fuck!”

“What?”

“I… shit, Dickie… I have no idea where we are and I… I might have missed a cut on my leg. I don’t… I don’t think I could use the needle and thread anymore, even if I managed to find it…”

There was worry evident on the older man’s face as he listened to Jason ramble. It was a sure sign regarding how bad Dick’s condition really was, when the man didn’t make any move to help Jason. Instead, Dick sighed, his eyes lined with pain:

“We’re in the… Blue Peaks Canyon.”

“What?” Now it was Jason who asked the dumb questions, his brain drawing a blank at the name Dick had just uttered.

“Blue Peaks Canyon… We… um… when we were younger… when you were Robin… we once spent a weekend there… skiing.”

“Yeah, and as you can see, now, we are neither dressed for a skiing trip, it is no longer the year 2008 and there is no snow so to speak off…”

Jason… maybe he was being harsh, but it always hurt to be reminded of these times. Not because they had been bad, but because they had been too good to be true. The boy Robin had been was bright and joyful and a little brat. The man Jason had become was angry, spiteful and still a brat – but now nobody found that cute anymore.

But Dick didn’t seem impressed by Jason’s exclamation, instead he continued, his voice breathy and faint:

“Idiot… we… we planned on spending a small… vacation here… just… three days… a small loft… hiking… nature… the two of us… just some… some reconciliation… it was supposed to be… a birthday gift…”

Dick was shaking once he had finished speaking, the small explanation costing him all the strength he had. But now that the words were hanging between them, Jason could feel himself remember as well.

Yeah, after a case a few weeks back, Nightwing had stayed at Red Hood’s safe house after the rest of the bunch had left… and Nightwing had asked if it wasn’t time for them to strengthen their brotherly bond again. It had been Jason’s idea to return to the mountains that had signaled the beginning of their friendship as teenagers.

And then… and then they had fought in the car on the way here, tense silence settling over them as they reached the first serpentine. It had started raining shortly after, Dick slowing the car down significantly.

The rest – as they say – was history.

“Oh… yeah… I-I remember now. It was… I think I hit my head as well, I had forgotten… I… sorry.”

“For what?”

“For implying you were only doing it because you felt sorry for me.”

“Pah… sorry for calling you… a… a drama queen.”

Dick was smiling, and for a moment Jason toyed with idea of playfully hitting his brother’s shoulder, in a show of socially acceptable violence, but his shoulder smarted at the very idea of being moved… and it was kind of low effort to hit a Nightwing that couldn’t hit back.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we?”

Jason tried to keep his tone light, not wanting to destroy this moment of tenderness between the two of them. But his leg hurt, the migraine a constant backdrop to everything. His back was resting against the boulder that had given them protecting during the early morning, and he knew… his entire right arm would be unsalvageable if someone didn’t pop it back in soon.

It was kind of hard to stay positive in a situation like this, especially since he was in the perfect position to watch Dick struggle to draw in one breath after the other, to watch the careful stillness of Dick’s body, that implied just in how much pain the man must be.

“Kind off… yeah… in… in a day or two… B… will notice…”

“Yeah, we’re both dead by then.”

“Fi-figured.”

Dick was too calm, too collected, and Jason hated it. While Dick had been unconscious, Jason had been the older one, the responsible one… and that had made it possible for him to push the panic down, it had made the pain bearable. But now? Dick was awake and dying, and suddenly Jason felt like a kid again, one misstep away from breaking down crying.

“Someone will notice the other car… there is still hope. They are probably already searching for us.”

It was a pipe dream, a fantasy conjured by a desperate mind, but at least it worked well enough to keep Dick – and himself – from focusing on their impending demise:

“Other… car?”

“Yeah, there was… we got hit. Our car spun and fell down the… the slope… I think… the last thing I remember are the headlights coming closer.”

“Oh…”

Dick fell silent again, and Jason couldn’t really find it in himself to keep the conversation going. Talking drained Dick, Jason could see that much, and he himself was unbelievably tired. A nap sounded wonderful, but he knew that was just his concussed brain talking.

The traitor wanted to lure him in a false sense of security, only this time Jason wouldn’t fall for it.

Light painted mandalas of green on the forest floor, and for a while it was enough just to watch, to let the light dance, and the wind act as an artist. The sight was almost serene, it would have been, if it weren’t for the fact that it was impossible to ignore the taste of blood on his tongue and the wheezing sound of his brother as he tried to breathe through the pain.

Some time must have passed, when Dick spoke again, his voice impossibly small:

“Can… can you hold my hand, Jay?”

“Why?”

“I don’t… I… it hurts…”

The pain must be immeasurable if Dick was willing to tell Jason. The idiot always hid his injuries, sometimes Jason feared Dick was even worse than Bruce…

It scared him, this admittance of weakness, because it meant that something was wrong. Very, very wrong. And Jason might be an asshole, but he wasn’t a bastard, his left-hand taking Dick’s in his. It didn’t matter that he was hurt as well, it didn’t matter that he wanted to cry.

He held Dick’s hand and said:

“You can’t die now.”

“I’ll… I’ll try.”

“You’d make a really ugly corpse like this. Your face is all fucked up. Nobody would recognize you… you have to survive so we can… so it can heal, and you can be your annoying pretty self when you die.”

Dick was smiling, and Jason was afraid.

Sometimes the world was as simple as that.

“You’ll live.” Dick mumbled.

What a twisted play of words – Jason was the one who lived, mostly because he had died before. Jason was the one alive – even if that was all wrong.

“Bastard.”

“Lo-love you…”

“Yeah… yeah, I love you, too.”

They fell silent, only this time Jason was afraid it was final. Only this time, he feared it would be forever. They had both deserved better than this, they had both a right for a more glorious ending.

Dick’s eyes fluttered close, his hand warm and dry in Jason’s grasp. They were still connected, still together.

The sun was beginning to set above them, the clouds long gone, instead, the world encased in a spectacle of red and yellow and orange. Flames consumed the forest, and only the darkest night would remain once they were done.

Jason took a deep breath, something in his chest aching fiercely – it might have been a forgotten injury, or it might have been his heart – as he closed his eyes.

He opened them again only seconds later, the sound he heard unmistaken-ly that of a search party:

“Hey! I have found two people… Yeah! Hey! I have found them!”

They had been found – and Dick was still holding onto his hand, Dick was still holding onto life.


End file.
